Want to learn how to play baccarat like a pro? As a former casino manager, I know the game can be intimidating, but my guide will help you master it in no time!
With the right knowledge and strategy, baccarat can be a thrilling and rewarding experience for players of all levels.
This guide will provide you with a comprehensive overview of baccarat, including its rules, variations, and strategies.
Whether you're a seasoned player or a complete beginner, you will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to confidently approach the baccarat table and increase your chances of winning.
Here’s what you will learn:
So, get ready to master baccarat and make the most out of your casino experience!
Baccarat is a popular casino card game that has been around in its current form for at least seventy years. Part of the reason for its popularity is that it has a very low House Advantage.
It is played using eight decks and dealt from a shoe.
It is a simple game that requires only one player decision: which side do I bet on?
You can bet on either the Banker or the Player.
There is an additional bet on the Tie, but more about that later.
Short History of Baccarat
The original game was called Baccara (meaning 'zero' in Italian at the time). It was invented in Italy in the early 1400s.
The game's inventor was Felix Falgulerein (sometimes spelled Falguiere), and some people say he started the game using tarot cards.
It later became prevalent in the court of the French kings (Louis XIV and onwards), and its spelling was changed to 'Baccarat.'
There have been several game versions, with the Punto Banco and Chemin de Fer versions still being played in some casinos worldwide.
Let’s explore the basic baccarat rules and the step-by-step process of playing the game.
The Goal of Baccarat : How to Play a Round Step-by-step
To help you learn how to play baccarat, we will use Urgent Games Baccarat as a practical example.
The game is played between the player and the banker, and the goal is that you correctly predict which of the two will have a hand that is closest to a total value of 9.
Here are the steps to play Baccarat:
Step 1. The game begins by placing a bet on either the banker's hand, the player's hand, or a tie.
Step 2. The dealer then deals two cards to both the player and the banker
You can choose to draw a third card if the total value of their hand is less than 6. The banker also draws a third card under certain conditions.
Step 3. Once all the cards have been dealt, the winner is the one with the hand closest to a total value of 9.
In the example above, the Banker wins, because his hand value is 5, while the Player has a hand value of 3.
Read on to learn more about the baccarat card values.
- All face cards have a value of 0
- Aces have a value of 1
- All other cards have a value of their point total – so a five has a value of five, an eight has a value of eight, and so on.
- Suits don't count – so don't worry about them at all.
Very Important
No hand can have a value greater than 9. If the cards add up to more than 9, you remove the first digit, leaving you with the actual hand total.
Here's how a baccarat hand works:
Let's say you have the following hand: Ace, 7 and 6. Adding them together gives you a total of 14.
Any value of ten is always counted as zero, so 14 automatically becomes worth 4 (14 minus 10 = 4).
Winning Banker and Player bets are paid even money. So, if you bet $100 on the Player and you win, you will get an additional $100.
As the Banker side has a lower house edge, the casino charges a 5% commission on winning Banker bets. This is simple to handle online as the computerized dealer deducts the 5% commission from the payout of a winning Banker bet.
Please note
In a brick-and-mortar casino, a winning bank bet may be paid at 19 to 20, so the dealer automatically subtracts the 5% from the payout.
Often, the players will place the 5% next to the winning bet so the dealer will pay their bet even money and collect the commission the player has placed next to it.
How do I calculate 5% of my bet?
It's a straightforward calculation.
For every $20 you have bet, 5% is $1. The commission on a winning $100 Banker bet is $5.
Players can bet that there will be a tie which happens when the Player hand and the Banker hand get the same card total. Ties pay 8 to 1 with no commission charged.
After the players have made their bets, the dealer will draw a card for the Player, then one for the Banker, then a second card for each.
Once the two cards are drawn for each side (Player and Banker), the dealer checks the total for each side.
A total of eight or nine ('The Naturals') for either side means the hand is over. At this point, a winner or a tie is declared.
If neither side has an eight or a nine with the first two cards, the dealer will draw a third card based on the 'Third Card' rule.
The third card rule in Baccarat specifies when each side may or may not draw a third card.
No decision is involved; the rule dictates when a third card must be drawn. Neither side can ever receive more than three cards or less than two cards.
The third card rule is an important aspect of the game of Baccarat. It determines when a third card is dealt to either the Player or the Banker.
Let’s find out how it works:
- If the point count of the Banker's hand on the first 2 cards dealt is 0 through 7, the Player's hand will draw or stay as follows:
| Player Has | Third Card Determintation |
| 0 to 5 | Draws |
| 6 to 7 | Stands |
| 8 or 9 | Natural (neither hand draws) |
- The total of the first 2 cards dealt to the Banker's hand, plus the third card of the Player's hand, determines if a third card is dealt to the Banker's hand:
| If Banker Has | Draws if Player's 3rd Card is | Doesn't draw if Player's 3rd Card is |
| 0, 1, 2 | Always draws except natural 8 or 9 | - |
| 3 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 0 | 8 |
| 4 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 | 1, 8, 9, 0 |
| 5 | 4, 5, 6, 7 | 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 0 |
| 6 | 6, 7 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 0 |
| 7 | Stands | Stands |
| 8 | Natural – No cards drawn | Natural – No cards drawn |
| 9 | Natural – No cards drawn | Natural – No cards drawn |
With the Player and the Banker having two cards, and the Player standing on a 6 or 7, and the Banker having 0–5, the Banker must ALWAYS draw a third card.
The easy way to remember the third card rule is as follows:
Treat the rule like a phone number 667-547-427, 3 stand on 8', which translates into:
| Banker Has | Player's Hit Card | Action Taken |
| 6 | 6 through 7 | Banker hits |
| 5 | 4 through 7 | Banker hits |
| 4 | 2 through 7 | Banker hits |
| 3 | Anything except 8 | Banker hits |
| 0,1,2 | Doesn't matter, always hits | Banker hits |
| 7 | Doesn't matter, always stands | None |
Here's how you remember the Third Card Rule easily:
- If the Banker has a 6, and the Player's hit card is 6 through 7, then the Banker gets a third card.
- If the Banker has a 5, and the Player's hit card is 4 through 7, the Banker gets a third card.
- If the Banker has a 4,and the Player's hit card is 2 through 7, the Banker gets a third card.
- If the Banker has a 3, and the Player's hit card is anything except an 8, the Banker gets a third card.
Fun Fact
And by the way, it was around here when I was learning this game that I became very respectful of Felix, the genius who figured out these rules, and how he made the game almost exactly fair to both sides!
If there is a tie, the bets on the Player and the Banker don't win or lose. They are a push, meaning that you won’t lose any chips, and your bet will remain active for the next round (unless you decide to remove it).
You will often hear the dealer say, 'Press, change, or rearrange your bets' after a tie hand.
A bet on the tie pays 8 to 1 – so if you had bet $10 on the tie, you would be paid $80 for your bet, plus you keep your initial bet of $10.
Sometimes you will see the payout listed as 9 for 1. The casino pays you $90 but keeps your initial $10 bet.
Ultimately, it is the same payout, and you end up with $90 after an initial bet of $10.
Tracking the shoe
Many players like to keep track of the winning hands as they believe the shoe may follow a specific pattern.
There are some pretty complex ideas about how to track the winning hands, which I will cover in a future article.
There are three different baccarat table layout sizes, but the game rules remain the same.
However, some differences exist in how baccarat is dealt with and how players handle the cards.
A Mini-Baccarat table is the same size as a Blackjack table, has one dealer who deals the game standing up, and typically seats six players. The players do not touch the cards.
A Midi-Baccarat table is larger than a Mini game, seating up to nine players. The dealer sits at the table. The players usually do not touch the cards on a Midi table.
A Full-Size Baccarat table (called 'Big Baccarat') is approximately 14 feet long by about five feet wide at its widest and is kidney-shaped. It is run by four dealers, three on the table and one on break. This table typically seats 14 players, seven at each end. The players draw the cards from the shoe at the direction of the dealers, and virtually all Big Baccarat games allow the players to squeeze the cards.
When I was a Shift Manager at a downtown Las Vegas casino, the Casino Operations VP wanted to add Baccarat to our floor.
As part of my research to decide how we would deal the game, I went to several Strip casinos to see how they presented it.
I liked how the Flamingo Hilton dealt the game, so I used their rules as the basis for our game.
They allowed the players to 'face the cards,' which is casino jargon for turning over the cards. So that's what we did, too.
Fun Fact #1
What they didn't do at the Flamingo Hilton was to allow the players on their Midi game to 'squeeze' the cards.
Usually, the player who has the largest bet on the Banker faces the cards for the Banker side, and the player with the largest bet on the Player faces the cards for the Player side.
Fun Fact #2
Squeezing the cards means that the player who is selected to face the cards can bend, crimp, fold, or otherwise render the cards unusable. In a casino allowing players to squeeze the cards, the cards from a completed shoe must be replaced because many are damaged.
This time-consuming process involves opening and checking eight new decks of cards for flaws and missing cards, then shuffling them, plus an additional type of shuffle used exclusively in a Baccarat game called 'a lace'.
Fun Fact #3
The shoe on a Big Baccarat table passes from player to player clockwise, allowing every player the opportunity to draw the cards. It's not at all unusual for a player to pass the shoe.
A player has a significant loss of face if they make a 'third card rule' mistake when pulling the cards, so rather than risk that loss of face, they pass the shoe.
One of the things that interfered with the smooth operation of the game from both the players' point of view and the casino's was that it required a 5% commission to be paid on a winning bank bet.
The collection of the 5% slowed the game down for the players significantly, and the collection of it caused some minor efficiency problems for the casino.
They had to come up with solutions to questions such as 'do we take the commission every hand, and if not, how do we keep track of what's owed by each player, and yet don't slow the game down.'
Additionally, some players would have an outstanding balance at the shoe's end yet had lost all their money, so they couldn't pay the commission. Now what?
More than ten years ago, two Las Vegas Strip Baccarat pit managers decided they would find a solution to this problem and spent months researching the game and finding the solution.
They came up with a way to get rid of the commission completely, and in doing so, realized they could add another bet to the game that has been a great addition to the excitement of the game for the players.
The no-commission format sped the game up, and the players love it.
The game is called EZ Baccarat and features 'The Dragon 7 Bet'.
Later, they added a second bet, 'The Panda 8 Bet'.
It has become a prevalent version of the game and is currently available in more than 150 casinos across the US, Canada, and the Caribbean. Explore more about the ins and outs of how to win at baccarat, including the Dragon 7 and Panda 8 in my article where I share specific strategies for each of the bets.
While it's true that Baccarat is a game of luck and there is no skill involved, you can maximize your opportunity to win by betting on the Banker exclusively. At 1.064%, the Baccarat Banker bet has one of the lowest House Advantage percentages of any casino game.
Betting the Player side isn't too bad compared to other games. The House Advantage on the Player side is 1.228%.
So overall, the HA on Baccarat makes it an excellent choice.
When you combine the low House Advantage with a Paroli strategy, increasing your bet by what you win every time you win, you can quickly find yourself with a big bet out there.
For example
If you start with a $10 bet and decide to try to win five bets in a row, you will have $320 when you win the fifth hand.
Winning five in a row doesn't happen often, but it happens enough to make it an exciting strategy. If five wins in a row are too strong for you, try three wins in a row.
You will have $80 after you win the third hand!
Want to learn more?
Check out my complete guide, where we explore some of the best baccarat strategies for playing and taking care of your bankroll.
Final Thoughts
Baccarat is a fun social game!
It is one of the most popular casino card games, particularly in Asian countries and with our Asian players.
It has a very low House Advantage and doesn't require much knowledge or skill to play.
Many casinos offer the game with a low minimum bet on their Mini-baccarat tables, so it's easy to find a place to play, and of course, it's available in online casinos too.
My advice is to try the game for free first - you can play free baccarat on Chipy if you want to learn the game first.
Once you're comfortable that you know how the game works and mastered the Baccarat Academy guides, you may want to jump in and play for money.
Good luck!
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